MiamiHerald.com: From Our Inbox

Kudos to those who graduated in four years

Wed, 22 May 2013 23:00 EDT

For the college students who will be paying for a four-year bachelor’s degree long after graduation day, here’s some consolation: At least it didn’t take you six or eight years.

Tornadoes sound like eerie silence — then evil

Wed, 22 May 2013 19:00 EDT

Does a killer tornado really sound like a freight train?

Networks serving up schlock

Wed, 22 May 2013 18:51 EDT

Networks are generally leery of shows that are set in the past.

Jerry Brown’s best chance to save California

Tue, 21 May 2013 16:00 EDT

It has been 35 years since California voters overwhelmingly approved Proposition 13, a measure that, as Gov. Jerry Brown put it in 2011, “started the centralization of power” in the state. He should know because he was also governor in 1978 and helped oversee that shift.

The issue behind Syria’s civil war

Tue, 21 May 2013 08:00 EDT

I just spent a day in this northeast Syrian town. It was terrifying — much more so than I anticipated — but not because we were threatened in any way by the Free Syrian Army soldiers who took us around or by the Islamist Jabhet al-Nusra fighters who stayed hidden in the shadows. It was the local school that shook me up.

On spying and Moscow rules

Tue, 21 May 2013 11:00 EDT

The arrest of the American diplomat, Ryan Fogle, in Moscow last week, was a journey to an earlier era, a throwback to a quarter century ago when these Cold War cloak and dagger spy games were painfully regular, as the United States and the Soviet Union played out the final act of a long and deadly contest. About the only difference in the handling of the ambush of Fogle by the Russian security service was that the photographic record of his arrest was in sharp, digital color, rather than grainy black and white. It was a textbook takedown. We see Fogle on the ground, arms behind him; then later in FSB headquarters being photographed with all the spy gear he was carrying. The “competent organs” are clearly protecting the motherland.

How a Texas paper brought down con man Billie Sol Estes

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:06 EDT

Billie Sol Estes, the Texan con man whose exploits rattled the administrations of Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, died in his sleep May 14. From a penniless background, Estes built up a $40 million West Texas empire of cotton, grain, real estate and fertilizers, and then lost it all when a series of newspaper articles in 1962 revealed that many of his dealings were fraudulent.

Almost nothing Obama says can be taken at face value

Mon, 20 May 2013 11:00 EDT

It turns out that President Obama’s Office of Management and Budget is no more trustworthy than the rest of his administration. His budget, unsurprisingly to conservatives, is not “balanced” and does not deliver on its promise to cut $1.8 trillion in spending over a decade.

How Obama can rescue his presidency from faux scandals

Mon, 20 May 2013 13:00 EDT

Here’s the White House view of the current trilogy of so-called scandals: Republicans are trying to destroy President Barack Obama’s second term by magnifying bureaucratic miscues and distorting policy realities. This isn’t without some merit.

IRS tax-exempt rules are the real scandal

Sun, 19 May 2013 13:00 EDT

It’s strange how “scandal” gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the “scandal” of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status.

Putin’s power grab trumps nanotechnology

Sun, 19 May 2013 11:00 EDT

Russian President Vladimir Putin’s changing attitude toward two giant government-led high-tech projects sends a troubling message about his third term in office: Maintaining power is more important than modernizing the economy.

Bring back managed trade to help workers’ safety

Sun, 19 May 2013 16:00 EDT

If all it took were official cajoling, public shaming, technical assistance or corporate promises, factory jobs in Bangladesh and other developing countries wouldn’t be so deadly.

How to lose a fight online

Sat, 18 May 2013 13:00 EDT

In Scottsdale, Ariz., there is a restaurant so far gone that even Gordon Ramsay’s shouting cannot save it. In fact, the owners of Amy’s Baking Company so terrified the man behind “Kitchen Nightmares” that he decided to quit working with them rather than endure them any longer.

The real scandal of Benghazi

Sat, 18 May 2013 16:00 EDT

Yes, Virginia, there is a Benghazi scandal.

First Amendment protects more than press

Sat, 18 May 2013 11:00 EDT

The Obama administration announced last week that it is throwing its support behind the press shield law that has been stalled in Congress since time immemorial. Critics insist that the administration, suddenly mired in scandal, is simply trying to curry favor with the news media, but the proposal deserves to be judged on its merits.